


if I were a wise man, I would give my heart

by leiascully



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Community: smut, F/M, Fluff, Holiday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-13
Updated: 2006-12-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:12:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things could have been different, he thought.  Cuddy might have smiled when he came in. It doesn't have to be like this, he thought, and then, but what other way could it be?</p>
            </blockquote>





	if I were a wise man, I would give my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-Finding Judas  
> A/N: Eh. This one was better in my head, when it was a lot shorter. But hey, schmoopy, snowy, not-quite-smutty-enough SmutTuesdayfic! Anyway, it's still Tuesday where most of you are! And I'm pretending it's still Tuesday where I am. Here's a little something to while away the hours until House. Title is bastardized from the lovely Christmas song "In the Bleak Midwinter" (thanks, Christina Rosetti!) because I heard those two half-lines and thought they sounded better together, in terms of House.  
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, and Fox. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

"Pack a bag," she said Thursday night, lingering in his office. "You're staying with me this weekend."

"No, I'm not," he said. "Remember, I'm a big boy now. Got my own apartment and everything."

"Suit yourself," she said. "Sleep in your jeans like an adolescent if you want, but you'll be doing it in my spare bedroom."

"I liked the ambiguity of your first offer better," he leered. "So why this sudden interest?"

"How about we talk about what's in it for you?" she countered. "Because just for starters, I've got your pills and I don't make house calls."

"I always loved your administrative style," he said. "Ruthless. You're like Genghis Khan without the furry hats."

"Second of all," she said, ignoring him, "I"m your doctor, and if you're detoxing, I can help you. Maybe, just maybe, if I can see a medial reason to justify upping your dosage I will. It'll look better in court if someone thinks you're actually in enough pain to justify that kind of stash, not that anything really could. Third, if you are in that much pain, you won't have been able to clean up your place since Tritter trashed it, which means you're a hazard to yourself and I don't want you driving across town every six hours. The weather's bad these days."

"Fourth, you're just aching for my company," he said, picking up his fuzzy ball and squeezing it hard. He saw her eyes flicker to his fingers, gauging the pressure, extrapolating his pain level. She was canny, Cuddy was, but she didn't understand his pain. She saw it, but she didn't understand. He put the ball down.

"Yeah," she said, "because it's going to be a picnic having you underfoot."

"I can think of other parts I'd rather be under," he said, eyeing her breasts. "But hey, if that's the way you play it. Give me my pills."

She tipped the tablets into his hand, and he couldn't help the hungry relief in his eyes. He felt her flinch as he cupped the pills to his lips. House had tried to be nicer since the case with the girl with porphyria, but his contrition came out more acerbic than he intended, the way it always was, so he had just stopped talking about the pregnancy. He took out the anger from the pain on his video games, which gave him a permanent headache, but was better than punching his fellows. Chase wore his bruise like a wound from an unpopular foreign war: nothing to brag about, just a wariness in his walk and a new weariness in his smooth face. When House ain't happy, ain't nobody happy, he thought, and thought Cuddy would have laughed if he'd actually said it, but she had her serious face on again. His hand slid down to his knee against his will, squeezing hard against the pain in his thigh.

"I'll try to get us out of here around seven tomorrow," she said. "Is there anything you need me to get?"

"Some outrageously lacy nightwear," he said, mumbling around the Vicodin, because the shape of the pills was such a comfort on his tongue. "Help you while away the long lonely nights while I'm at my apartment. All the comforts a cripple could need right there."

"Except then you'll have no pills and no one to call, and it's a safe bet Tritter would have found the morphine if you still had any, and he didn't, so you don't," she said smoothly.

"Women," he said, still working the pills around his mouth. "What, there's not enough room at my place for your bossy boots?"

"You don't have a spare room and I'm not sleeping on the couch. Tomorrow. Seven o' clock in my office. Be there or suffer." House watched her pocket the empty pill bottle and leave his office. He liked that brisk administrative walk that made her ass sway and her calves flex. She knew him too well, maybe, with the walk and now this displacement intervention. He had been toying with bad ideas all week about how to get his hands on something stronger than aspirin. If he did it, she'd have to fire him and he'd go to jail, and everyone knew it. Wilson as sure wasn't going to save him from himself this time, homeless and desperate or not, and he wasn't likely to aid and abet either, maybe ever again, but House swallowed hard against that thought and sent the pills down finally and into his system. The Nintendo headache began to subside. He turned to the computer and bet himself lunch that it would be two journal articles before his thigh surrendered enough that he could release the death grip he had on his right patella. He won. He lost. That was the way these things went.

He had decided to go at some point, because he owed her a little peace of mind, but it still surprised him to be standing in front of Cuddy's office. His backpack was stuffed with a couple of changes of clothes and a pair of scrubs that could double as pajamas. He went in without knocking, brashnees to cover the nervousness that manifested as a tickle between his toes. Cuddy was unfazed. Nothing new under the sun.

"You ready?" she asked. Her eyes were placid, weary. Her shoulders looked tense under her sweater. Things could have been different, he thought. Cuddy might have smiled when he came in. She might have had a ring on the third finger of her thin pretty hand. Her shoulders might have eased down slowly as he approached instead of hitching up almost imperceptibly, and maybe the look in her eyes would have been more warmth and less worry. It doesn't have to be like this, he thought, and then, but what other way could it be?

His thigh throbbed and he clenched his calf muscle and tightened his grip on the cane. He didn't need kids. He had a thigh that screamed in different timbres and demanded gifts. He didn't need someone to wake up to. He had the pain curled against him in the mornings, breathing against his neck.

"Ready," he said.

Cuddy got up and clipped across the room to her coatrack. She shrugged into her coat, that new cream colored thing that he liked on her, and he thought about holding it as she pushed her arms into the sleeves, but cane and bag and habit were too much to carry already. She stood close to him - proximity had never bothered her - and pushed her hand into her pocket for the Vicodin, thumbing off the top of the little bottle. Cuddy dropped the pills into his palm and he thought about kissing her, but the desire for the tablets was louder and he pushed them through his lips and swallowed.

"You remembered to pick up the rest? This isn't a secret rehab weekend?" His voice was rougher than he intended, and he leaned hard on his left leg.

"I've got your fix," she said, and there was a strange sad note in her voice.

She drove them home. They didn't talk much. He watched her unlock the door and tried to look as if he belonged on her porch. There was a snap in the air: he watched his breath make clouds. The sky was flat and low, heavy with the threat of snow. He could feel the storm building by the ache in his thigh. They left coats and shoes in the foyer, a practiced gesture somehow. She went to change while he dropped his things in the spare room and prowled down the hallway, tempted to make scuff marks on the floor with the rubber bottom of the cane. She made dinner, just pasta and vegetables, and they ate without saying anything and watched tv for a while in silence, like lovers who have known each other for so long they have nothing left to say. Cuddy sat in one corner of the couch with her hands curled around a cup of herbal tea and her feet tucked under her. House sat in the other corner with his feet on her coffee table and she didn't say a thing. His toes twitched and his thigh ached and he though about pacing, but there wasn't room in her rooms for a really good pace.

"Shower's through there," she said eventually, stirring and getting up slowly.

"I know," he said. She stood for a moment, looking down at him, and he thought, this could be different, but couldn't figure out a way to draw her down to him. It was too much of a stretch and the music from the television was all wrong as background.

"You would," she said, and padded off in her stocking feet. He heard her put her mug in the sink, and then she went into her room and rustled around. She went back into the kitchen and came back out with his pills in one hand and a glass of water in the other.

"Not time yet," he said.

"I know," she said, "but I'm going to bed."

"You trust me?"

"As far as I can see you," she said with a glint of humor in her voice, and her hair was loose around her face, and she looked a little more at ease in these rooms with their less clinical furnishings. She was lovely, which he knew, but never thought about. But now she just looked tired. "Good night, House."

"Night."

He sat up a while, staring at the television, rubbing his hip and the side of his thigh, trying not to touch the scars. Cuddy was going to bed in the other room, doing all those womanly before-bed things, no doubt, washing her face so the little curls at her temples would curl even more, tiny damp ringlets over her forehead and in front of her ears. Brushing her teeth with that Cuddy efficiency, getting foam on her wrist. Taking out her earrings, dropping her watch into the dish of jewelry on her dresser, changing into her pajamas with all that lace, maybe rubbing lotion into her calves. He remembered watching Stacy do those things, pearls haphazardly spilling out of her jewelry box, lotion on her ankles so that his legs in the morning smelled like roses where she'd rubbed against him. Cuddy would be roses, too, he thought. There was something about professional women and romance and the simple elegance of roses, as if they needed reminding they were women, Cuddy with her curves and her cleavage and her curls and Stacy with her breasts and the hips that were slim but still womanly.

Women were a puzzle he'd never figured out and somehow that was all right, except on an individual basis. He weighed the pills in his palm meditatively. He could take them now, be as close to pain free as he got for a couple of hours, but he'd regret it in the morning. His next dose wasn't for two hours. Less suffering now or more suffering later?

Nearly fifty and finally learning prudence. He dropped the pills onto the table next to the glass of water and flipped through the channels looking for a movie. There was nothing good on, so he changed to the least offensive set of reruns and dozed through them, hand on his thigh. At midnight he roused, swallowed the pills with just enough water to let Cuddy know he'd had some, and shuffled off to bed. It was a nice bed, soft and fragrant. It wasn't his bed, but it would do. He reached for his bag, dragged his clothes off and the scrubs on. Cuddy had left a few extra pillows and he wedged one under his leg and one under his head. He slept.

He half-woke in the morning when he heard Cuddy up and about. There was a moment when he thought about getting up to see if she was wearing anything lacy, but it was warm in the bed, and after a moment she pushed open the door anyway and put two Vicodin on the bedside table.

"Come to join me?" he said muzzily, face in the pillow.

"Going to the gym," she said, and he opened one eye to look her over.

"I love a woman who knows her spandex," he said.

"I know you do," she said. "I'll be back in a little while. Feel free to make breakfast if you get motivated."

"You took in the wrong guest if you're expecting eggs and pancakes. That's Wilson's department."

"I know," she said softly, and there was a strange tone in her voice, but he couldn't identify it. "Take your pills. I'll be back soon."

"Hmph," he said, and stretched out his hand for the tablets. She left as he swallowed them and he pushed his face back into the pillow and slept for a bit longer, trying to put off the moment when he had to move and his leg remembered the lasting effects of Stacy's march to the sea. After an hour or so he got up slowly, shifting his leg with two hands, reached for the cane, and limped into the bathroom attached to Cuddy's bedroom. The bath in the other bathroom was too tall to step in and out of. At least in this little stall, he could lean against the walls. Her bath stuff was girly, but the water was hot. He had been wrong about the roses - Cuddy's fragrances of choice seemed to be lavender and something involving tea. He spent a long time under the hot water, then got out and wrapped himself in Cuddy's fluffy towels and left wet footprints on her rug. He heard the front door while he was dressing.

"Pancakes!" he shouted.

"Shower!" she called back, and he stretched out on the bed with his Gameboy. He let himself get absorbed in the game, yet another animated quest to save a world gone mad, and it was surprising to actually smell pancakes half an hour later. He hobbled out to find Cuddy in the kitchen, hair wet and tied back, dropping batter onto a griddle. The kitchen was fragrant with breakfasty smells: coffee and milk and the hot smell of buttery non-stick spray.

"Didn't think you actually cared," he said, bracing his hip against a counter.

"I don't," she said, but softened it with a smile. "My sister is bringing my niece over and then I'm taking her to the park. She's going crazy over all the snow and my sister's too busy with the baby to take her. Feel free to come with us."

"Yeah, because a day of romping around is sure to improve my Scrooge-like disposition."

She shrugged and flipped a pancake. "Suit yourself. Stay here and play your Gameboy all day. Want me to leave your next dose?" His thigh twitched at the thought. He needed to move, and prudent Cuddy wasn't about to take what was no doubt an adorable ragamuffin of a niece to a park with unplowed walkways.

"I had a full day planned," he said, "of ransacking your house to discover all your secrets. Then again, even misanthropes love snow."

"Good," she said. "Coffee?" She pushed over a full mug without waiting for a reply, and nudged a couple of packets of sugar toward him. He stirred sugar into his coffee and watched her as she turned pancakes. She had a mug of her own, black as sin from the smell of it, and she was holding it a little too close, like the warmth was a comfort. With one hand, she flipped pancakes onto a plate for him, and set it on the counter with a bottle of syrup, real maple syrup, from the fridge. "There you go."

"Thanks," he said awkwardly, and found a stool as she put a fork next to the plate. He set the mug down and cut into the pancakes, and Cuddy went back to her griddle. She lifted her coffee to her lips and took a sip, and he chewed the first warm sweet bite and watched the way the little wrinkles played around her eyes as she drank the coffee, and he knew. She held the mug by her heart, like she was cold, and he knew. Cuddy always took milk in her coffee but this was black and bitter and she was drinking it like she missed it. She had the same little crinkles around her eyes that she'd had when she'd seen him limping around after the infarction, when she'd been glad to see him, apparently, but sad to see him like that. And now she was drinking coffee again. She had been pregnant. She wasn't pregnant anymore. She wasn't trying anymore. And she still had this stupid bottle of syrup in the fridge in case her sister's kids wanted breakfast.

He had been wrong. She would have been an excellent mother.

He ate the pancakes and Cuddy stuck the dish in the dishwasher just as the ragamuffin showed up with a woman whom House thought he would have known was Cuddy's sister in any light, in a dark room, on a dark night even. They had matching curves and the same hair, though Cuddy's sister had straightened hers, and she was a little heavier than Cuddy, a few more laugh lines around her mouth, her life a little easier on her. She balanced a dark-haired baby on her hip, and she laughed as Cuddy did introductions and unbundled the ragamuffin from the coat and scarf and sweater she'd apparently needed to walk up the driveway.

"So you're the great and terrible Doctor House? I'm Moira, and this little one is Jamie. And this," she rested a palm on the walking, talking child's head, "is Danielle. Say hello, Dani."

"Hello," said Dani obediently. "Aunt Lisa, are those pancakes for me?"

"Sure are, sweetie," said Cuddy, bending a little. "And if your mom says it's okay, you can have chocolate sauce on them."

"Why not?" said Moira. "Your watch. I've got to run, Lise, I've got the carpet cleaners coming and then I've got to do a thousand tons of laundry." She kissed Cuddy on the cheek, blew a kiss vaguely toward Dani, and fluttered her fingers at House. "Goodbye, Doctor House."

Cuddy ate breakfast with Dani, though hers was yogurt and apples over a little bit of granola instead of pancakes. House played Gameboy on the couch until all the dishes were safely put into the dishwasher and the ragamuffin had been wiped clean of chocolate sauce.

"Ready, Dani?" said Cuddy, zipping up the requisite adorable coat and making sure there was an adorable mitten for each adorable hand. Kids' fashion had really gotten ridiculously cutesy, House thought. "Why don't you go ask Doctor House if he's ready?"

"Doctor House?" said Dani, appearing around the side of the couch. "Are you coming to the park with us?" House looked over at her. She had blue eyes, curly hair, the Cuddy mouth. It could have been this way, he thought, blue eyes in a baby's face looking up from the cradle of Cuddy's arms.

"Of course I'm coming," he said. "The park has swings."

"You like the swings, Doctor House?" said Dani, looking dubious, and she was so much like Cuddy at that moment that House almost laughed.

"Everybody likes the swings. Call me Uncle Greg." Dani smiled at him, and across the room Cuddy smiled at him too, a tentative bright thing. He smiled back as he levered himself up, and it felt like putting on an old suit that still looked good but didn't quite fit the same across the shoulders. He liked kids fine. They didn't try to bullshit him. They were selfish, sure, but they were honest about it. He wasn't sure quite why Cuddy had that look of pleased surprise, but he wasn't going to fight it, either. The shower and the pills had relaxed his leg and he was almost looking forward to this park thing as he and Cuddy put on their coats.

They piled into the car, Cuddy installing a car seat House hadn't known she had, and drove to the park. The roads had been plowed, but it was bright outside, a good six inches of snow piled on things. Cuddy slipped on a pair of sunglasses and House squinted. "Check the glove compartment," she said. "I think Moira left a pair of sunglasses in there a while ago."

"I am skeptical," he said, but even girly sunglasses would be better than the glare. He found them and put them on, his reflection mirrored darkly in Cuddy's lenses. Even through the scratches on the glasses, he could tell she was smirking a little.

"Very flattering," she said.

"I think you look pretty, Uncle Greg," said Dani loyally from the back seat.

"At least somebody does," he pretended to sulk. "Aunt Lisa doesn't think pink is my color."

"You look very fetching," Cuddy said. "I was just wondering if I could incorporate those into your work dress code."

"If I won't wear my lab coat, I'm definitely not wearing these. The rhinestones are not a selling point."

"Oh, aren't they?" Cuddy was trying not to laugh, he could hear. "Dani, sweetie, do you want to listen to your Disney music?"

"Yeah!" Dani said enthusiastically, and Cuddy slipped a cd into the player. House stretched his leg as far as he could under the dashboard and tried not to hum along to the songs. Disney music was strange that way: he'd never made a point of listening to it, never really watched the Disney movies because he hadn't been around kids, but he still knew a frightening number of the words to "Under the Sea". He chalked it up to cultural absorption and was glad when they got to the park, and even more glad to see that the sidewalks had been scraped and salted.

"Are you gonna make snow angels with us, Uncle Greg?" Dani asked as Cuddy unstrapped her from the seat.

"I think I'll take a walk," he said.

"Why do you have that cane?" Dani asked once she was free and on the ground, Cuddy tugging a little pink hat over the adorable curls.

"Hurt my leg a while ago," he said.

"Does it still hurt?" She squinted up at him.

"Every day," he said, and Cuddy touched Dani's shoulder.

"Come on, baby. We'll go make angels and let Uncle Greg walk for a while." He watched them walk off, Dani's tiny hand in Cuddy's, before choosing a path and limping away. The trees were heavy with snow but the path was clear and free of ice. New Jersey looked almost pretty. He made a slow round of the park. It hurt to walk, but it felt good too. Walking didnt fix things, but at least the changing pressure changed the ache a little. He was moving, feeling the muscles flexing and relaxing, remembering the days he had been whole. In Michigan, the winters had never bothered him. But then in Michigan he had been young, and Cuddy had been young.

He found them again by accident. It was a twisty path and he'd been looking for ice and not paying attention to exactly where he was going, but there they were, laughing, and he'd come all the way around. Dani was a little elf in pink. Cuddy looked like a Madonna in her white coat with the skyblue scarf and her curls flying. She'd taken off the sunglasses and put them on Dani and they were standing in the only clear patch in a sea of snow that had been floundered in, thrown about, and generally rearranged into something resembling angel-shaped holes, some of them so deep the brown grass showed through. There were lots of Dani-shaped holes, and even, as he approached, a couple of Cuddy-sized angels, and as he limped closer, he could see there was snow crusted on the backs of her shoulders and scattered over her coat, making her shimmer.

Dani saw him first, squealed and scrambled over the snow to him, almost running into him but skidding to a stop just in time not to crash against his legs. "Uncle Greg! You see our angels?"

"I see them," he said, and she put her little hand in his free one and he couldn't bring himself to shake her off. Cuddy squinted at him, her eyes crinkling just like her sister's. She looked pleased. Her cheeks were flushed like a girl's and her blue eyes were bright.

"What ho, apothecary?" he said.

"Shakespeare?" she said.

"Either that or Hemingway," he said flippantly. "I forget." Dani waded into the snow, pulling him along, and he put his feet down carefully in the places where there was less snow.

"Dani, honey," Cuddy began, but House waved her off.

"It's fine." He stood in a clear patch and shifted from foot to foot.

"You wanna do one?" Dani asked, jumping into a new drift.

"Show me," House said, jerking his chin. "Not sure I could pull one off the way you can."

Dani beamed and flopped backwards into the snow, wallowing with her arms and legs. Cuddy moved up to stand next to House. "You're a charmer," she murmured.

"Hoping good behavior might score me an extra painkiller down the line," he murmured back, and pulled off the pink sunglasses and put them on Cuddy, trying to settle the earpieces right when they snagged in her hair. She put up her hands and adjusted the frames, grinning at him and her breath coming out in clouds.

"Keep it up," she said, "and maybe I'll call Ingrid."

"A full body tag team effort?" he leered quietly and she made that endearingly exasperated face. He stood next to her, leaning away from his bad leg, a little too close to Cuddy, but she didn't move away. She was almost tucked up against his side, calling encouragement to Dani, and he had the urge to put his arm around her.

It could have been like this, he thought, and didn't realize until she looked at him that he'd said it out loud.

"Maybe," she said, eyes inscrutable behind her sister's sunglasses. "Life's more complicated than that. Oh, Dani, see? That one's perfect! Come on. We've been out in the cold long enough. Let's go to Starbucks for hot chocolate."

Dani beamed, covered in snow, and put her hands on her hips for a moment as she looked at her angel and then leaned forward to draw a halo with one mitten. To House it looked like a rather shapeless hollow in the snow, but he gave Dani a thumbs up anyway. Standing still in the cold was starting to make his leg ache again and he wanted to move. Dani grabbed his left hand and Cuddy's right and walked between them all the way back to the car, and Cuddy brushed her off and put her back into the car seat while House eased himself into the front. Maybe it was the dizzying glare off the snow, or the numbness from cold and Vicodin, but this felt fairly normal. Cuddy pulled the car out of the parking lot and they argued briefly and cheerfully about which Starbucks would be most convenient. They ended up going to the one in the middle of town, which was farther from Cuddy's house, but had better tables, and a sofa. House stretched out his leg across the cushions and glared merrily at anyone who gave him the eye, brandishing his cane.

"What do you want?" Cuddy asked.

"Anything to take the edge off," he smirked. "You did bring the good stuff, didn't you?"

"I figured your cane was hollow," she said with one eyebrow arched, and dropped her scarf and coat on his knee. "Dani, do you want to come with me or stay with...Greg?"

"I'll stay," Dani said firmly, and House thought, oh, she'd be trouble later, stubborn already.

"Okay, sweetie." Cuddy took Dani's hat off and smoothed the girl's hair, which was going in all directions. "House, can you help her with her coat? I'll be back in a minute."

Dani turned the big blue eyes on him and House motioned her over and helped her awkwardly unwind the scarf and unzip the adorable coat, making sure an adorable mitten was stuffed into each adorable pocket. This kid thing wasn't so hard. Even if she decided she had to pee in the next couple of minutes, he could handle that, though he hoped she waited until Cuddy came back. Cuddy was looking good in a sweater and jeans and boots, leaning her elbows on the counter. House watched her appreciatively, dividing his attention between Dani and Cuddy.

"So, sprout, got any life plans yet?"

"My name is Dani," she said with a deeply solemn air. "Not sprout. Are you going to marry Aunt Lisa?"

"Aren't you adorable?" he said. "Look, there's Aunt Lisa coming back. Why don't you ask her?"

"Aunt Lisa," said Dani obediently, "are you going to marry Uncle Greg?"

Cuddy got that look on her face where she couldn't seem to close her mouth, the one that promised retribution later. "Probably not, sweetie."

"Why not?" Dani looked up at her aunt with a perplexed expression.

"Bathroom!" said House cheerily, swinging his leg off the couch and reaching for his cane.

"Why don't you take this with you?" Cuddy said, leaning over to fish in her coat pocket and staring daggers at him, but they were blunter daggers than usual. She handed him the single-dose pill bottle he was beginning to despise. He swallowed the pills in the bathroom, looking like a real junkie, and by the time he limped back to their table, he was feeling better. Dani was curled into Cuddy's side on the couch, so he sat in a chair and propped his foot on a low table. Cuddy indicated his cup with her chin and he picked it up and popped the top off, dragging one finger through the whipped cream.

"What's this?"

"Gingerbread latte," Cuddy said.

"Evil woman," he said without venom. He took a sip. It wasn't too much of an abomination. He took another sip.

"I have hot chocolate with candy canes," Dani announced. She was almost cute, House thought. A bearable child. He wondered what Cuddy had said by way of explaining their non-marriage.

"Ready to go have lunch?" Cuddy asked. "Dani? Mac and cheese?"

"Mac and cheese!" said Dani enthusiastically. Fortunately, getting back out to the car didn't require all of the adorable winter layers to be layered back on. Cuddy broke out a puzzle when they got home from an impressive collection of toys in the back of a closet, and House and Dani sat putting it together until lunch was ready.

"Hey, sprout, find all the edge pieces first. They've got a flat side like this, see? Then you can put together the middle."

"I know!" said Dani. "And my name isn't sprout."

They had the frame finished when Cuddy came out with plates full of macaroni. "Hey, you two, time to eat." Dani hummed happily all through lunch and banged her feet against her chair. She and House played with the puzzle a little longer while Cuddy did the dishes, and then Dani abandoned them to watch cartoons while House tried to find the pieces that made the left-most tree and Cuddy put together a little lake at the bottom of the landscape. Dani fell asleep on the sofa and didn't wake up until Moira arrived in a flurry of babies and kisses.

"Mom! Mom! I did angels and then we did puzzles and had mac and cheese!"

"Sounds like an exciting day, baby," Moira laughed. "Thanks, Lise. You're a lifesaver."

"No problem," said Cuddy, leaning against her doorframe, looking like she wanted to hold the baby, but Moira was already holding Dani's coat, half out the door.

"Not too much trouble, Doctor House?"

"Kid was great," he said. "Wish my patients were half as honest."

Moira gave him a puzzled look. "That's good, I guess. Okay, we're off. Love you, Lise. See you next weekend." She kissed Cuddy's cheek and left, leaving behind the smell of baby powder. The house felt emptier, like the frame of the puzzle when all the inside pieces are lost.

Cuddy collapsed on the couch when her sister had gone, and House joined her. "Is this the time when we get the true confessions about how you feel about taking care of your sister's kids?"

She gave him a wan smile. "I love them. I just wish I had my own sometimes."

"You're a good weekend mom," he said. "I was wrong, before."

She looked at him with her eyebrows drawn together, then leaned forward and kissed him, her mouth warm and soft. She tasted like coffee and House put a hand on her hip for just a moment before she drew back. His leg was quiet and there was a different warmth than usual building in his abdomen, spreading down toward his thigh.

"I'm sorry," she said, touching her hand to her lips. "I don't know why I did that."

"Do it again," he said. "Cuddy. Try again." He didn't understand her baby dreams, but she deserved his help. She deserved his support. He had never really been there for her and sure, this was a complicated thing to start, but when had his life ever been simple? Too much thinking, too much planning, and if he was always prepared, he was more and more rarely satisfied these days.

"It won't work," she said.

"How often have you known me to fail?" he said, trying to get her to smile, because her eyes were gleaming like she wanted to cry.

"Not often enough," she said, almost smiling, and he put a hand under her chin and drew her over. Her mouth opened against his and he let his tongue slide against hers to make her gasp. Her body was curves and bone and he suddenly ached to touch her, to find the places where her seams were, to remind himself how elegantly she was put together underneath all the tailored suits. It was her. She was everything all by herself. "House," she said, and pulled back a little. "I want everything."

"I owe you," he said, a couple of consonants away from revelation. "But I wasn't lying - I could use a Vicodin to get through the foreplay." He wasn't hurting now but the pain lay in wait, underneath the heat of wanting her.

"Come on," she said, and took his hand, and led him to her bedroom. He walked stiffly, navigating around his thigh and his erection. She took a Vicodin from her bedside table and pressed it between his lips, kissing him. He pushed his hands under her sweater, his fingers a little chilly against the warm curve of her waist, but she didn't complain, just moved closer to him, one hand around the back of his neck and the other cupping his cheek.

It was soft and slow like a dream sequence, undressing her, her undressing him. She kissed his scars and he surprised himself by letting her. He weighed her breasts in his hands, half-worshipfully. She was beautiful naked, pale skin and dark curls and rosy where the blush of arousal spread down her front. The way she touched him with her little clever hands made him feel handsome again, wanted. All the tension and energy he usually put into fighting her, thwarting her, crackled in the air between them, transmuted into a more mutual spark, desire for a new completion. He kissed her for a long time, tangling his fingers in her hair, running a hand down her smooth back and over the curve of her ass, dipping into the damp heat between her legs and drawing spirals down her inner thigh. She moaned a little against his throat and he felt like he was falling in love.

"You're sure?" she said after a while, her eyes huge in the dim light that the afternoon made filtering through the curtains.

"Sure enough," he said, and rolled onto his back, drawing her on top of him. She settled over him, looking a little nervous, and she was tight enough that it had probably been a while since she'd had sex. Him too. Too long. But now here they were for each other, and he watched her closing her eyes and finding a rhythm. He cupped her breasts in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over the nipples. It was good to be in her, all that heat and moisture and the deep sense of belonging. It felt like home somehow, some kind of peace, though it was probably just the endorphins talking. She gasped and whimpered and he loved it, wished he could do more than lie there, but his leg protested as he tried to lift his hips. She put her hand between them, her fingers moving, and he pulled them away and sucked on her fingertips, sliding his own hand against her clit, enjoying the crescendo of her moans, the heat growing underneath his balls. She moaned on a long shaky note and he felt her muscles clutching around him, and he pushed up into her with awkward, jerky thrusts and the room dissolved into a winter wonderland of white and cream.

She lay on his chest, breathing hard, for a long couple of minutes. He trailed one hand through her hair. "Put your feet up," he murmurmed.

"I know," she said. "I like it here."

"I like you there," he said, "but the little guys have work to do." She moved off him reluctantly and put her feet up against the wall above the headboard. He wedged a pillow under her hips, tipping them up.

"You're bossy in bed," she said.

"And here I always thought you'd be the take charge one."

"You'll see later," she yawned. He was warm, sex-sated, mostly pain free. It was as close to happiness as he'd been in a long time. He put his head on her hipbone and tugged the comforter over her as much as it would go.

"You're right. Let's nap first." From under her chin he could see her smile as the muscles of her face lifted, and she ran a hand through his thinning hair.

"Incorrigible," she said. "I hope you never change."

I don't, he thought, and fell asleep nuzzling against her stomach.


End file.
